COS HEGEL gan a "Life of Christ;" wrote and rewrote a "Criticism of Keligious Ideas;" and corre- sponded with Schelliug about his essay on the Ego ( Vom Ich}, which was stirring the pulses of ardent thinkers. He passed through, in his own experience, the conflict between the older supernaturalism and the prevalent rationalism, neither of which harmonized with his specula- tive tendencies. Yet, to the end of his life, he professed accordance with the Lutheran ortho- doxy, and one of his later public addresses was a eulogy upon the principles of the Augsburg Confession, pronounced as rector of the Berlin university upon the tricentennial celebration in 1830 of the adoption of that instrument. Be- fore 1800 he had drawn up the outline of a sys- tem of philosophy in three parts : the first op logic and metaphysics combined ; the second on the philosophy of nature ; the third on the philosophy of mind or spirit. Here was al- ready foreshadowed that identification of logic and metaphysics which is one of the marked peculiarities of the Hegelian system. But as yet he had not clearly mastered the idea or the method of his scheme ; he needed sharper thought and conflict to know whereto all this study was to grow. Hegel's father died in 1799, leaving him a patrimony of 3,000 florins, and he at once determined to devote himself to philosophy at Jena. This university had been made illustrious in literature by the new romantic school of the Schlegels, Novalis, and Tieck ; Fichte had just been driven thence to Berlin on the accusation of atheism ; Schelling was now there, arousing the enthusiasm of the novices in the mystery and marvel of the new philosophical intuition ; and here, too, Fries, Krause, and Ast were commencing their fruit- ful philosophical career. To the philosophical world Hegel presented as his introduction an essay on the " Difference between Fichte and Schelling," advocating, more definitely than the latter had done, the position that this dif- ference was not adequately designated by say- ing that the former taught a subjective and the latter an objective idealism, but rather that Schelling's system included both. This was published in the spring of 1801 ; in the autumn its author became tutor in the uni- versity. His dissertation on his appointment was De Orbitis Planetarum, a zealous advo- cacy of the German Kepler against the Eng- lish Newton, containing also an unlucky pole- mic against Bode's law about the proportional distances of the planets ; he went so far as to suggest that, according to the true law, the space between Mars and Jupiter should not be filled up, ignorant that Piazzi had already dis- covered the asteroid Ceres. From 1801 to 1806 (in which last year he became professor) he lectured on logic, the philosophy of nature, psy- chology, ethics, &c. His first course was giv- en to four auditors. Awkward in his deliv- ery, encumbered by his thoughts, he failed to interest any but the most thoughtful. " He thinks in substantives," said one of his audi- tors ; often the structure of his sentences was incomplete. Carrying to his lecture a mass of loose papers, he would fumble among them, arranging them dialectically, under his rigid categories, as he went along. But as his " dry light " became warm, his eye and voice would grow keen, and he would often break out into an aphorism, a sarcasm, or a pregnant antithe- sis, long to be repeated. His best manuscripts were copied from the students' notes. At Jena, too, in conjunction with Schelling, he edited the Kritisches Journal der Philosophic ; and these two philosophers were still so nearly agreed, that the authorship of one of the most impor- tant articles was afterward claimed by both ; it is on the "Kelation of the Philosophy of Nature to Philosophy in General," and is in- cluded in Hegel's works. Hegel's lectures at this period on the philosophy of history con- tain some of the strongest statements, after- ward modified, implying a pantheistic confusion of God and the world. But even then God was to him, not a mere substance (as in Spi- noza), but a subject, and as such spiritual, the absolute spirit. The statement that Hegel identified God and nothing, and that this is the sense of the system, is an entire misconcep- tion. His career in Jena was brought to a close by the French invasion of 1806. In the turmoil of that campaign, his chief solicitude was about the fate of some of the last sheets of his " Phenomenology," which he was sending to a publisher in Bamberg. The manuscript was saved, but the philosopher's house was sacked by French troops, and he was reduced to his last penny. In 1807-'8 he was editor of a po- litical sheet in Bamberg, and there he pro- jected a work on the political constitution of Germany, which was never completed. At Nuremberg he was rector of the gymnasium from 1808 to 1816, and gave philosophical lec- tures to the lads, issued as the 18th volume of his collected writings under the title Propa- deutilc a simple, clear outline of the main points of his general system, in a style as pop- ular as the abstruse subject admits. His ad- ministrative ability was here seen to be of a high order ; he was ever punctilious as to all fit rules and observances. In September, 1811, he married Marie von Tucher, of an ancient Nuremberg family, 22 years his junior a lady of refinement, decided in her Christian convic- tions, indefatigable in her daily charities, to whom he was attached with singular love and tenderness. To his constant friend Nietham- mer he wrote that "when a man has found a position and a wife that he loves, he is quite complete for life." Often would he praise her in verse, and his best letters are those he wrote her on his journeys. Two sons, Karl and Im- manuel, were born to them. His domestic affairs were carefully arranged ; his family life was one of unbroken peace ; and it may havej mitigated, as in the case of Comte, the ab- stractions of his system. Some of the severest parts of his " Logic," as the writer happens to
